Artist Biography
I am an Ecuadorian newcomer artist currently living in Calgary. My ultra-bright paintings are brimming with human-animal characters and satirical playfulness, confronting the viewer with a multiplicity of storylines. The paintings I create involve jam-packed scenes and winding narratives that require an ongoing and iterative viewing, tasking viewers with the visual labor of following a busy constellation of intersecting characters. Through these characterizations, my work enlivens the distinct cultural mannerisms of Ecuador as they play out in manifold and often contrary visual scenarios.
In a moment of shrinking biodiversity, my paintings presence the layers of animality in Ecuador as more than a backdrop for human activity. My work experiments at the intersection of this animality and the urban commercialization that shapes the aesthetic essence of Ecuador’s industrial cities, its ironies and contradictions. Significant to my art practice is an insistence to look beyond the individual acting in isolation, bringing place-specific details into view within a broader social and cultural context.
As a recent immigrant, I have begun to use painting as my method of inquiry in exploring the social and ecological nuances that figure my new home in the city of Calgary.